If you were sent back to the roman era and could only bring a backpack of goods. What would you bring?

EffortlessOps@sh.itjust.works to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 144 points –

If you were sent back to the roman era and could only bring a backpack of goods. What would you bring?

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If I'm going to be transported to the European peninsula too, besides time travelling, I'd want at least:

  • my laptop. Download everything from multiple Wikipedias, including the Italian one for good measure. (Why Italian? Largest Wikipedia in a Romance language that I'm proficient with.)
  • some charger for the above. I don't even mind if manual.
  • Latin vocabulary printed book. I can speak some but I'm not proficient in the language.
  • Some silver and gold. Money back in Roman times was still based on the value of the coins. And money never hurts.
  • Clothes carefully prepared to not look Roman, but typical enough from the times. The idea is to pass as a cultured barbarian from a tribe that is too far away from Rome to bother.

You're going to need medicine. Penicillin for sure.

Penicillin might be a good idea, but once you set up some simple electricity production, you can generate bleach (electrolyse brine, then input the chlorine back into solution; discard the hydrogen). Being able to bleach your water is huge.

Unless you accidentally get wood splinter and die of gangrene.

I find it uncanny just how close this reply is to an idle thought I've had for many years.

Power has yet to be invented. Once your laptop dies it becomes uselesss. Batteries deteriorate over time and without the latest security patches you'll definitely get infected sooner rather than later.

Power has yet to be invented. Once your laptop dies it becomes uselesss.

That's why I mentioned a charger in the following line.

Batteries deteriorate over time

Sure, that is a concern. For a few years later; the idea is to at least have at hand some knowledge to translate into Latin and put into useful applications.

Also, remember that electricity can be produced with a bar of copper, a bar of iron, and some acid. Such as vinegar or even citrus.

and without the latest security patches you’ll definitely get infected sooner rather than later.

Yeah, because Mark Anthony will totally send me files like cleopatrahotpix.jpg.exe [/sarcasm]

No need to worry, those security patches would be millennia ahead of any contemporaneous trojans.

without the latest security patches you'll definitely get infected sooner rather than later

By what?

Yeah you gotta watch out for those ancient roman black hats. Or togas.

Tunicae? "Per Hercle, tunicae nigrae sunt diri - computatrum meum inuaserunt! Merda!" doesn't sound too bad.